In the Media

“The opportunity for people to use this as a time to transition into buying is probably going to be less for Blacks. How great that difference is, it’s too early to say,” said Chris Herbert, managing director at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Small landlords, also known as single-family rentals, make up about 34% of the estimated 45 million renter households in America, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies reports a steady decline since the great recession in household formation for people ages 25 to 34 years old.

Chris Herbert, managing director for the Joint Center for Housing Studies, said the success of the Greater Boston economy keeps drawing higher-wage workers to the area, driving up demand while we’re simultaneously building far fewer houses than we did 30 years ago.

“There has been a transfer of burden from the commercial and industrial sectors to the residential sector,” said Riordan Frost, research analyst at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

On average, affordable housing stock (where rent is below $800) in the Rust Belt cities identified has fallen nearly 20% since 2011, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The national average is about 12%.

Researchers at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that more than a third of older people are cost-burdened when it comes to housing, an all-time high. Deep racial inequities around homeownership, income, and affordable housing access exacerbate these issues.

Roughly 6 million people were considered "cost burdened" in 2018, meaning that they pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. “It really affects us,” Rodriguez said of his family's looming eviction. “It’s our right to humanity, a home and living.”

While homeowners may continue to do more projects throughout the fall, some experts predict spending will fall. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing predicts annual declines in renovation and repair spending of 0.4% by the second quarter of 2021.

The homeownership gap between Black and white Americans on the cusp of retirement reached a 30-year high, according to a 2019 Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies Report.